Jackass
“Plastic Jesus”
(BYO / Big Daddy)
Jackass play hickabilly rock and roll that sounds like something new and refreshing at first, only to get bogged down in substandard songwriting. The cool, country influenced riffs that dominate the first few tracks will have you pulling your grandpa’s “Ghost Riders in the Sky” LP from the shelves but before you remember how to put the needle onto the vinyl, you’ll be sick of the whole thing.
The thirteen tracks on “Plastic Jesus” are sadly annoyingly repetitive (including the ill-conceived cover of Madonna’s “Music”), proving that no hook is thick enough to cover three minutes of the same verse, chorus, verse stacked on top of each other. Jackass would be a great band to stumble across buried in a compilation-their sound is markedly different from anything you’re likely to come across in your daily whirlwind through the radio dial, and seems to hold real promise.
When placed amongst a dozen of their identical brothers, however, Jackass’ dependence on catchy finger picking and Merle Haggard records becomes all too obvious.
